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José Cruz: And you’ve just uh, I think you’ve just started paying for a house, right?

Robert Long: No. I- I paid cash for my house

José: Oh you you paid outright for that? (Yeah) Oh good for you.

Robert: I’m free. No debt. (That’s that’s fantastic) Well I mean, actually the houses in Japan are becoming cheaper and cheaper, and they’re supposed to become very very cheap in the next five years due to a new law that’s coming into play, as you know.

José: No, I don’t. What’s this law?

Robert: The law that all vacant houses are going to be taxed six times higher than they already are.

José: So what does that mean?

Robert: So those- that means if you have a vacant house you’re going to try to really unload it very quickly or…

José: Oh you said “vacant”. Oh I’m sorry (Vacant) I didn’t quite get that word, vacant. (Vacant, yeah) Oh really? when does this law take effect?

Robert: Well they’re they’re- it’s proposed, so it may come into eff- they actually may (two or three years?) Maybe a year? Two years, yeah.

José: That’s fantastic. You know what , there was a house across the uh, the house across the -I call it a street the alle- the alleyway (the alleyway) it’s about the width of an alleyway- this had to be about uh 250- so this thing is about 500m2.

Robert: OK. That’s huge!

José: It is huge! it had a barn the size of a house (Right) the size of a big house. (Right) And in between the barn and the house was a- was the land, and the land itself was about as much space as you needed to again put the same size barn and the same size house to put between the barn and the house (Right. Wow). So it was like a huge yard, beautiful house. It was probably built like in the 1990s, (Right) so only 20 years old. It looked pretty new. (Hmm) Everything else was was like super functional. I was super tempted to actually go out there and put down a loan and buy it, (Right) because I could have put down a deposit of of half the purchase price. (Right) It was what, 240, I’m sorry no, two-point –24 million (24 million, OK. right ) 24 million! And this thing probably would have been at least 600,000, 700,000 dollars in Canada. (Sure) At least. (Oh at least, yeah) At least. I mean like, yeah, It’s it’s in a kind of more quiet, out-of-the-way less convenient neighbourhood, But I was looking at that thing, I was going, “I could live in worse places”. (Right) The only thing keeping me from it was the idea that, why would one person want to live in such huge house. I would look strange. But you know, now I regret it, but maybe I don’t, because you just told me about this law. Houses like that aren’t going to be rare.

Robert: Well it’s it’s- if you could wait two more years, three more years and then maybe even half that price. (Holy crap) Because then, then people are going to be going, “Oh my god!” And they’re going to realise that all this surplus housing now is on the market and people can go to these places and rent them. So rents will be dropping drastically… (Right) Um…

José: Oh good, because if nothing else my- I can make a demand for my rent to fall- go down.

Robert: Yeah exactly. Because you can say, “Look, all these other places are available.” so…

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